Basic Trope: A network moves away from its original concept.
- Straight: The Romance Channel adds several horror shows to its line-up.
- Exaggerated:
- The Romance Channel dedicates more than 90% of its programming to horror and shortens its name to the RC Network.
- The Romance Channel plays literally anything but romance.
- Downplayed: The Romance Channel is mainly dedicated to romance, with some horror shows popping up here and there.
- Justified:
- The Romance Channel's ratings have been falling as of late, and the executives thought it was necessary to pick them back up again.
- Contracts and other politics and legal mumbo-jumbo mean that the network has a harder time getting the shows it once ran onto the network.
- Romance shows are losing appeal and the Romance Channel needs to find new appealing shows to air.
- The Romance Channel has to find a new demographic as its viewers are migrating to rival networks.
- Inverted: A network starts off with a variety of programming, but as time goes on, the channel settles to a particular niche.
- Subverted:
- The new shows on the Romance Channel do have romance in them, it's just set in a horror setting.
- The shows are based on literature from the Romantic Era, not "romance" as we think of it today.
- That's not the Romance Channel, that's the frequency-license sharing daytime only SchoolTV Channel.
- The horror shows are included because they have genuinely engaging romantic subplots.
- Double Subverted:
- ...except that it turns out to be Blatant Lies and they don't have any form of romance in it.
- Or alternatively, the "romance" takes place in just one episode of one series on the network.
- They don't have air that kind of show these days either.
- Though the horror show with a romantic subplot wasn't added for horror reasons, its success leads to more horror shows being added as executives try to replicate the first one's success while failing to realize what made it thrive.
- Parodied: Alice turns on the Romance Channel, hoping to take her mind off her Stalker with a Crush. The channel shows nothing but horror movies about crazed stalkers. Just when she's about to change the channel, a bumper pops up: "You're watching the Romance Channel! All lovey-dovey, all the time!"
- Zig-Zagged: The Romance Channel airs romance in its beginnings. Then, horror gets added to the lineup. Then, it drops the horror and airs romance again. But then, it goes back to horror.
- Averted: The Romance Channel plays romance throughout its life span.
- Enforced: See "Justified".
- Lampshaded: "Why are you watching horror on the Romance Channel? Aren't you supposed to be watching, you know... ROMANCE?!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The rival channel, Mushy Channel, markets off the fact that it is an actual romance channel.
- Defied:
- An executive gets fired because they suggested bringing in horror to the Romance Channel.
- The plan to add horror to the line up to pick up the ratings backfires. All traces of horror on the channel vanishes and it returns to playing romance. The ratings get better as a result.
- Discussed: "I wonder why the Romance Channel is bringing in horror..." "Who knows except for the executives..."
- Conversed: "The Romance Channel went downhill since they brought in horror."
- Deconstructed: The plan to add horror to the line up to pick up the ratings backfires, and makes the Romance Channel's already bad ratings even worse. The Romance Channel gets dropped from major cable carriers and the channel eventually folds.
- Reconstructed:
- While adding horror shows did cause the Romance Channel to initially lose some ratings, the added horror shows do find a cult following. Subsequently, the cult following expands to a respectably large fandom, convincing the executives to rebrand the Romance Channel and continue airing horror.
- The horror shows were critically acclaimed and well received by other viewers. Subsequently, the Romance Channel finds a new, larger audience that appreciates the change in programming.
Back to Network Decay, which was good... when it lived up to its name.
